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Daily Archives: September 3, 2012

After Jesse Hoorelbeke’s game-tying two-run home run and Adam Donachie’s go-ahead RBI single in the top of the eighth inning Monday night, the Patriots still needed to get six more outs to seal a victory.

But for all intents and purposes the game was over.

Brian Anderson, Andrew Dobies and Brandon Braboy slammed the door over the final two innings as the Patriots stole a 4-3 victory from the spiraling Long Island Ducks at Bethpage Ballpark.

Dobies allowed a one-out triple in the ninth before giving way to Braboy, who struck out Kraig Binick and retired Bryant Nelson on a fly ball to center field to notch his second save in as many days.

The Patriots trailed 3-0 after three innings but starter Chase Wright bounced back to hold the Ducks at three through six innings. Carlton Smith tossed a scoreless seventh and Anderson repeated the trick in the eighth.

The Ducks, who won the Atlantic League Liberty Division first-half title, are 15-35 in the second half.

Cancer survivor Colin Curtis received a curtain call after hitting a home run for the Yankees in 2010. He is now with the Patriots. (Associated Press)

Colin Curtis has received a standing ovation for hitting a home run in front of 47,521 fans at Yankee Stadium, but he gets the same kind of thrill when a single voice is rooting for him because he is an inspiration.

Curtis, a former Yankees outfielder who is trying to earn his ticket back into affiliated baseball with the independent Somerset Patriots, battled testicular cancer as a 15-year-old high school freshman. Over time, Curtis, 27, has become proactive about publicizing a message of awareness and the power of fortitude.

“I love it when guys come up and say, ‘Hey, I read about you, and I had cancer when I was 16, this is how it affected me and this is what I’m doing now,’ ” he said. “I like the fact that they’re pulling for me not because I can hit a little bit but because they (relate) to what I’ve been through.”

It began simply enough — with Curtis noticing one of his testicles was swollen around the time that the Washington high school sports calendar transitions from basketball to baseball.

“At 15, you have no information about anything like that so I thought, ‘I probably just banged it playing basketball,’ ” said Curtis, who monitored the problem for about a week until bringing it to his parents’ attention. “When I got it checked out, I was fortunate my family, friends and teammates were really supportive. I caught it before it spread too far. I was able to take care of it with some surgeries.”

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — As he stepped into the batter’s box to lead off Monday night’s game, Joe Holden had to breathe a sigh of relief at receiving confirmation that he did not misread the lineup card.

A right-handed starting pitcher — Chris McCoy of the Long Island Ducks — was on the mound against the Somerset Patriots, who faced a left-hander 11 times in a 16-game span to close August. The string of left-handers is a chance anomaly that has affected Holden more than anyone else in the lineup.

“It’s something I’m well aware of,” Holden said of his struggles in lefty-lefty matchups. “It’s been wearing me down. There was a time in affiliated ball when I hit lefties better than righties.”

Holden, whose .280 batting average is third-best on the Patriots, is hitting .331 with in 157 at-bats against righties and .209 in 115 at-bats against lefties. The splits are at their most exaggerated point since the sweet-swinging line-drive hitter first joined the team in 2010.